Blakely's unpardonable sins in the eyes of the sex that he found so
much to interest him in a pursuit that neither interested nor included
them. A man with brains and a bank account had no right to live alone,
said Mrs. Sanders, she having a daughter of marriageable age, if only
moderately prepossessing. All this had the women to complain of in him
before the cataclysm that, for the time at least, had played havoc
with his good looks. All this he knew and bore with philosophic and
whimsical stoicism. But all this and more could not account for the
phenomenon of averted eyes and constrained, if not freezing, manner
when, in the dusk of the late autumn evening, issuing suddenly from
his quarters, he came face to face with a party of four young women
under escort of the post adjutant--Mrs. Bridger and Mrs. Truman
foremost of the four and first to receive his courteous, yet half
embarrassed, greeting. They had to stop for half a second, as they
later said, because really he confronted them, all unsuspected. But
the other two, Kate Sanders and Mina Westervelt, with bowed heads and
without a word, scurried by him and passed on down the line. Doty
explained hurriedly that they had been over to the post hospital to
inquire for Mullins and were due at the Sanders' now for music,
whereupon Blakely begged pardon for even the brief detention, and,
raising his cap, went on out to the sentry post of No.
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